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We help people work better together by turning feedback into results.Tue, 26 Sep 2017 19:50:16 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.2The Leadership Intelligence Podcast by DecisionWise is the premier business, organizational development, and human resources podcast on the web. Listen to real life case studies and interviews with organizational change and human resources experts. Listen as they share best practices on how to increase employee engagement, how to give feedback, practical advice on how to be a leader, how to develop a thriving company culture, tips on management and team building, and real life business stories from years of practical work experience.DecisionWisecleanDecisionWisesollerton@decision-wise.comsollerton@decision-wise.com (DecisionWise)DecisionWiseListen to organizational change and human resources experts as they share best practices, advice, tips, and years of experience in increasing employee engagement, leadership, and building thriving business cultures.DecisionWisehttp://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000150927805-v8metq-original.jpghttps://www.decision-wise.com
sollerton@decision-wise.comThe Leadership Intelligence Podcast by DecisionWise is the premiere business, organizational change, and human resources podcast on the web. Listen to real life case studies and interviews with organizational change and human resources experts. Listen as they share best practices on how to increase employee engagement, how to give feedback, practical advice on how to be a leader, how to develop a thriving company culture, tips on management and team building, and real life business stories from years of practical work experience. 66575431Do You See Meaning In Your Job? These Employees Do. - DecisionWisehttps://www.decision-wise.com/do-you-see-meaning-in-your-job-these-employees-do/
https://www.decision-wise.com/do-you-see-meaning-in-your-job-these-employees-do/#respondTue, 26 Sep 2017 12:00:45 +0000https://www.decision-wise.com/?p=14674Can you find meaning in your job? Some people can’t seem to find meaning in their job or see the difference their job makes. Think about the tasks you perform on a daily basis. Are you bored just thinking about them or do you feel engaged and energetic because you know there is something MORE […]

]]>Can you find meaning in your job? Some people can’t seem to find meaning in their job or see the difference their job makes. Think about the tasks you perform on a daily basis. Are you bored just thinking about them or do you feel engaged and energetic because you know there is something MORE to your job? Others look beyond the daily tasks and see more in the end product, user, or outcome of their jobs. They see MEANING in their work.

What creates meaning for employees? So many different things create meaning for employees in their jobs that I didn’t want to guess. Instead, I asked the masses and here are 15 real-world examples of how employees find meaning in their work:

I provide speech coaching to professionals. This may include training in presentation skills, American-English pronunciation for bilingual speakers, those with strong American regional accents, or communication skills needed for leadership. When my clients say they are able to make a successful presentation, get promoted or simply feel more confident about speaking, that gives my work meaning.

One client is a highly skilled professor, but his pronunciation of American-English was so hard to understand that I had no idea what he taught until he drew me a picture. After speech coaching, he reported that his students understood him better. They got better grades and he felt more successful as a professional.

My clients are highly motivated to learn, and that makes working with them very meaningful for me!

One of the core values of our company is helping others, and we apply this value not only to our customers and coworkers but also to serving those in need outside our company.

In a recent company meeting it was shared that a 17-year old boy in Honduras was treated for hearing loss and through Oeveo’s donation was provided with a hearing aid that allowed him to hear for the first time. The fact that my company gave someone the ability to hear, someone who would have never been afforded the opportunity except through our donation, truly showed what meaning is. See video here.

I already thought my cloud-based bookkeeping business was pretty cool when we founded it. However, what has become incredibly meaningful to me, and something about which I am now obsessed is that by helping my clients automate and outsource their accounting needs, it has given them so much freedom that they never thought was even possible.

The buzz you get when a client emails you to ask what you need from them, and you respond and say, “Nothing” is great. Clients are finding more saved time than they ever expected. Some spend it with family, taking up hobbies, or planning an expansion––it’s very exciting to see clients liberate themselves from the shackles of hated tasks!

When I first went into private practice as a tax professional, it was a bit scary. You took anything that walked, crawled or hopped into the office. You didn’t say no to any tax work.

I met a client who had a tax problem that spanned 10 years. She came in initially for tax preparation on a current year but told me that she had been through 5-6 tax professionals, about 3-4 IRS agents, etc. No one could help with her problem and it just seemed endless. Just as an IRS agent was working through her case and the client thought it would be over, the IRS agent would be transferred, or would retire, etc. and she had to start all over again. The previous tax practitioners she went to couldn’t help. I asked her if I could take a shot at it. You could tell she didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in settling this. I took the case on. I was able to go back to the initial 10-year old problem, obtain some old microfiche from the IRS, make our case, and get the whole thing closed successfully. An employer had duplicated a W-2 and for 10 years, the IRS tried to say the client had double the income she did.

It was exciting to help someone with an ongoing tax problem that was considered unsolvable, and I got to do some good detective work to sort the whole thing out and to argue the case before the IRS and win.

Tax problems really knock people for a loop, and it’s a burden many people carry with them for years, until it’s settled, so this case had great meaning for me. And many years later, I still have this client.

I started my company that makes teething toys and pacifiers for babies in 2009 with no experience in the consumer products industry. My background is in Information Technology and Finance, but in 2008 when we had our first baby I knew that I wanted to focus my career on a more meaningful path. I wanted to show my children that life wasn’t about money and that it was about doing what you believe in and finding meaning in that passion. This involved leaving a very comfortable career making 6 figures to move in the direction that I felt God was leading me. It hasn’t been easy, but there isn’t really any career that is.

Through faith and tenacity, Little Toader is a success. Our products are sold around the world and in stores like Walmart, Toys R Us, Destination Maternity, Barnes and Noble and buybuy Baby.

I photograph ridiculously happy people. I specialize in weddings and portraits, and just this past June I photographed a fantastic wedding for the sweetest young couple, Marlee and Dan. For each wedding shoot, I make a list of family photos I am to take, and Marlee and Dan’s included a photo with Marlee’s grandmother. She wasn’t super mobile, so Marlee and I came to her at her seat and I snapped a few photos of them talking with one another. I included one in their sneak peek video the next week.

Not long after the wedding, I received a message from Marlee asking if they could please have a copy of the photo as Marlee’s grandmother had recently passed away, and this was the most recent photo of her. The family wanted to use it at her funeral.

This was so significant. We photographers prattle on about the importance of preserving family memories, but we rarely experience these things so shortly after an event like a wedding. In this sad time for Marlee and her family, I was able to bring them smiles and relieve a little bit of stress. I could actually see how my work can brighten my clients’ lives. It’s not just about decorating my clients’ walls, but actually helping them heal and remember the good times fondly!

Twice a year, my Medicare-related insurance company offers a $1000 scholarship for students age 50+ who are returning to school to get a degree. Our clients are baby boomers, so we designed the scholarship to give something back. Several of our employees are on the scholarship committee, which spends several weeks every Spring and Fall reviewing hundreds of applications to find a winner. While grades are important, we weight the scholarship heavily toward students who have a history of community service, especially if it’s to the elderly.

My brother and I own this business and we both went to college on scholarships. It’s awesome to be able to pay it forward to other worthy students. It’s been a meaningful way that we can give back to the community from which we earn our living and also foster and encourage community service that helps and supports older people.

As the content writer for TruckDrivingJobs.com I find myself frequently engaged in crafting content for our online presence that is informative to truck drivers who visit our site and read content that may educate those who new to or considering a career in the commercial trucking industry.

I recently wrote a piece for our site entitled, The Problem With Using A Lot Lizard – How to End Human Trafficking. The unfortunate truth is that human trafficking is still a problem in the United States and our audience (truckers) may see instances of this all too commonly. I wrote the piece to serve as an update to the issue as well as to give drivers resources in which to aid the problem if they wished to help.

The piece received a great deal of attention within our inner circle of readers as well as networks adjacent to us including driver advocacy groups, human trafficking organizations, and individual truckers who took note and shared the piece. In the time that followed publishing the piece, I had several drivers email me and thank our site for the information found within the article and several others asking if they had permission to share the piece. It made me feel great to know that something I helped contribute had the ability to cause such a visceral reaction within the trucking community.

On Father’s Day our CEO, Tom Bognanno wrote a Huffington Post article called, Skip the Tie and Help Save Dad’s Life This Father’s Day to raise awareness for men’s prostate cancer. Tom wrote about his personal battle with prostate cancer and encouraged men to get tested and for families to skip the tie and save dad’s life on Father’s Day. My husband and our CFO, Molly’s husband read Tom’s piece and immediately contacted their doctors. ZERO: The End of Prostate Cancer named Tom their Zero Hero of the month––and we spread the word through our website, social media, email newsletter, and more.

Every day we come to work knowing we are building stronger, healthier communities, and helping everyone live healthier lives. Very rewarding!

Customers always leave us reviews telling us how special their personalized gift was and how much the recipient loved it. This always makes you feel good about your work but one customer’s comment really touched me.

A woman purchased a personalized whiskey decanter as a wedding gift for their father. It was engraved with a special note saying, “Out of all the walks, this one is my favorite.” She explained that this gift gave her the opportunity to express how much she truly loved her dad. She later told us that when she gave the gift to her dad, they had not spoken in years and that her father started to cry when he opened the personalized gift. They now talk all the time and have become very close. She wanted to thank us for helping make it happen.

Customer experiences like this give me meaning in the work we do and gifts that we send. Finding meaning in my work motivates me to continue to produce memorable gifts for our customers.

I worked for a year at an organization benefitting career-oriented women. We provided networking events, professional memberships, opportunities to be featured in online newsletters, press releases, and more. But, what I loved best about the organization was not so much the products and professional memberships; rather, the fact that the organization was so rooted in feminism. I was surrounded by employees who believed in equal rights, equal pay, and equal treatment — and I was proud to share my own views with my colleagues. I felt that we all worked together to help professional women earn the respect that they deserve.

After a diverse and successful 31-year career at IBM, I retired and formed my own diversity and career development consultancy in 2010.

For 4 years I was IBM’s global corporate LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Diversity Manager. It was so exciting to help create an equal playing field and having a positive community impact on an often maligned and oppressed minority. Addressing discrimination and lack of understanding on one side and providing hope and inspiration that things are getting better on the other side gave me great satisfaction in work that impacted lives.

As a mom, I know hundreds of others whose career choices are impacted by family reasons and life events. Many have struggled to make an impact or find the right resources. So my longtime friend and I were motivated to co-found Maroon Oak, a free career platform to connect women locally and virtually.

Build the career you love!

As entrepreneurs and moms, our life is very demanding––running a lean startup needs both a huge time commitment as well as sizable resources. Lots of learning, many pressures, late nights and crazy days. And most of all, you need tons of motivation and support to keep going!

Every career connection we help make on our platform forges an ever-growing link!

That’s why we do it––it’s exciting and fulfilling for us to see the numerous women members who have connected successfully though us.

I am the editor and marketing manager for Enjuris.com, a website that provides resources to people after life-altering accidents. Over 10 years ago, my sister nearly lost her life in a motorcycle accident. Knowing how impactful that accident remains for her and our family, I wanted to create a way to let her, and others like her, share their stories. It can be therapeutic for survivors to share their experience with others. Knowing that I can be the catalyst for that brings meaning to my work.

Seeing people break through financial roadblocks, save more money and secure better futures is incredibly rewarding, however, there is one project I worked on recently which held particular significance for me.

The international money transfer industry is big business in America, with more than 84.3 million people in America sending $140.7 billion to people in other countries last year. Research shows the number one reason people send money overseas is to support friends and family, a significant portion of remittances are necessary transactions for those who rely heavily on them, a fact some institutions appear to exploit through inflated fees and rates.

To help bring some transparency to the industry, and more competitive choice to those making and receiving international money transfers, Finder embarked on a three-month research project into the industry and best practice.

We saw the industry set a new benchmark, with a number of providers amending services to lift their standard, providing more competitive choice to consumers. Knowing that people are getting a better deal on their international money transfers, with friends and family receiving more on the other end has given real meaning to the work we do.

Meaning, an Essential Key to Lasting Employee Engagement

We’ve seen some examples of how employees find meaning in their work. People can find meaning in seemingly routine and distasteful work. The opposite is also true––employees working in seemingly engaging, challenging, fulfilling jobs can become disengaged if they cannot find meaning in them.

There must be something inherent in the workplace that enables the employee to serve a purpose uniquely important to him or her. It’s up to the organization to till the soil and lay down the nutrients that allow people to create their own meaning out of what may be mundane or exhausting, then stand back and let that meaning find its own form.

]]>In our 2017 State of Employee Engagement survey, we collected feedback from over 150 organizations to create a comprehensive look at employee engagement best practices. One section of the survey included a set of questions about programs being used to increase employee engagement and the success of these programs. Here are five key findings from the research:

1. Only 52% of Companies Have an Employee Engagement Program

We asked HR leaders if their organization has a formal program currently in place specifically aimed at enhancing employee engagement. One surprising finding is that only 52% of respondents indicated they did, while 41% reported they did not (7% did not know). We suspect that more than 52% of organizations are using programs to improve engagement such as employee feedback systems, training courses, or employee events but they have not created an umbrella program to address employee engagement at an organizational level. Our research also found that those organizations that did have a program in place were more likely to see engagement levels increase over the past three years.

2. Lack of Knowledge Cited as #1 Reason for Not Having an Employee Engagement Program

We then specifically asked those who do not have any engagement programs: “Why does your organization not have any programs in place to enhance employee engagement?” “Lack of knowledge about the benefits of employee engagement” was the most-cited response at 65%, followed by “other competing priorities” at 26%. Surprisingly, “lack of executive team support” was only mentioned in 12% of the responses.

3. Employee Feedback Systems are the #1 Engagement Initiative

The study drilled down to the specific programs and initiatives being used to improve employee engagement. We asked: “What types of employee engagement-specific initiatives has your organization implemented in the past three years?” Employee feedback systems such as employee surveys, focus groups, and interviews consisted of 84% of the responses, followed by recognition programs (33%), company events (32%), and wellness programs (31%).

4. Most Employee Engagement Programs are Somewhat Successful

HR leaders had mixed feelings when asked: “Overall, how successful do you feel these programs have been over the past three years in increasing employee engagement?” 48%, responded with, “somewhat successful,” possibly indicating that it is difficult to calculate the impact of “soft” people programs. 38% responded that their programs have been successful or very successful, while 11% reported their programs were not successful.

5. Future Engagement Plans Dominated by Employee Feedback Systems

What type of employee engagement initiatives will organizations implement in the future? Most organizations reported they will utilize employee feedback systems (employee surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc.) with that initiative collecting 70% of the responses. Other mentions were wellness programs (18%), recognition programs (18%), and company events/parties (18%).

Two Best Practice Takeaways from this Research

Later in our survey, we asked HR leaders if the level of employee engagement in their organization had increased, stayed the same, or decreased over the past three years. For those where engagement increased, we found two significant differences. Companies with increasing levels of employee engagement have a formal employee engagement program in place and have consistently measured employee engagement each year for multiple years. These findings seem somewhat obvious, but it confirms that if your organization is only somewhat committed to engagement, your results will reflect your halfhearted efforts.

]]>https://www.decision-wise.com/what-are-companies-doing-increase-employee-engagement/feed/01463810 Questions That Need To Be In Your Employee Engagement Survey - DecisionWisehttps://www.decision-wise.com/10-questions-need-employee-engagement-survey/
https://www.decision-wise.com/10-questions-need-employee-engagement-survey/#respondTue, 19 Sep 2017 17:41:16 +0000https://www.decision-wise.com/?p=14618Here are the top 10 employee engagement survey questions that should be included on your next survey.

]]>An employee engagement survey measures several factors that contribute to employee performance and retention. Most organizations conduct employee surveys annually, with some opting to increase the frequency to bi-annually or even quarterly. Companies generally use the results of these surveys to drive change and improve organizational culture.

Employee engagement surveys normally consist of about 50 questions organized into themes or frames of reference. These groups often consist of survey questions about the job, team, supervisor, and overall organization. Themes may include leadership, values, safety, communication, teamwork, training, and company benefits.

Research-based employee engagement surveys contain three important components that accurately measure engagement. These include anchor questions to measure the overall level of employee engagement, engagement driver questions, and open-ended questions. Here are the top 10 employee engagement survey questions that should be included on your next survey:

3 Anchor Questions to Measure Overall Engagement

Many organizations make the mistake of calculating engagement by either using the average score of all questions or the result of just one question. Both methods result in an inaccurate measurement of engagement that we cover in the post, How to Measure Employee Engagement.

Anchor questions are designed to measure how engaged an employee feels in his or her work. We recommend using the results from six anchor questions to calculate levels of engagement, which can range from fully-engaged employees to fully disengaged employees. Here are three sample anchor questions to measure the overall level of employee engagement:

It is easy to become absorbed in my job.

This anchor question indicates how involved a person feels in their work. Does time fly by when working on a project? Is the work interesting or fulfilling?

I would recommend Sample Company as a great place to work.

This anchor question evaluates the level of commitment a person feels towards their company. It indicates how much pride is felt by working at the company.

My job is stimulating and energizing.

Work that is challenging and exciting is a strong contributor to engagement. Tedious or monotonous work can lead to disengagement.

Based on the latest research, there are five key drivers of employee engagement: these include meaning, autonomy, growth, impact, and connection. Here are five employee survey questions that measure the drivers of employee engagement:Meaning

My job provides me with a sense of meaning and purpose.

Do employees find meaning and purpose in their jobs? Does their work make a difference for themselves or others?

Autonomy

I have the freedom to choose how to best perform my job.

Do employees have freedom, self-governance, and an ability to make choices about their work?

Growth

I feel challenged and stretched in my job in a way that results in personal growth.

Does the job provide development and growth opportunities? Does the work challenge and stretch employees to grow and improve?

Impact

Most days, I see positive results because of my work.

Do employees feel like they are successful in their work? Do they see that their effort makes a difference and contributes to the overall success of the organization?

Connection

I feel like I belong here.

Do employees have a personal connection with the people they work with, their boss, and the social community of the workplace?

2 Open-ended Questions

Open-ended comments provide a wealth of qualitative information and detail on the reasons behind employee engagement survey scores. We recommend using two simple open-ended questions:

What are the greatest strengths of our organization?

What are the areas that need the most improvement in our organization?

Our research shows that using more than two open-ended questions significantly lengthens the time it takes to complete the survey and doesn’t yield much additional qualitative information.

These 10 questions are a good start to building an employee engagement survey. Additional questions should be included that measure satisfaction elements that attract and retain employees. A well-designed employee engagement survey will produce an accurate overall engagement metric while providing several data points for action planning at all levels in the organization.

]]>https://www.decision-wise.com/10-questions-need-employee-engagement-survey/feed/014618Improving Employee Engagement: Where Do I Start? - DecisionWisehttps://www.decision-wise.com/improving-employee-engagement-where-do-i-start/
https://www.decision-wise.com/improving-employee-engagement-where-do-i-start/#respondWed, 13 Sep 2017 22:56:32 +0000https://www.decision-wise.com/?p=14600Embarking on an Employee Engagement initiative without surveying first is like shooting at a target with a blindfold on. . . and not knowing if you are even facing the right direction. Type the words “Employee Engagement Tools” into any search engine and you are likely to see the following product categories: Social […]

]]>Embarking on an Employee Engagement initiative without surveying first is like shooting at a target with a blindfold on. . . and not knowing if you are even facing the right direction.

Type the words “Employee Engagement Tools” into any search engine and you are likely to see the following product categories: Social Collaboration Tools, Benefits Tools, Recognition Tools, Gamification Tools, Communication Tools (Intranets, Extranets, Portals, Hubs), Leaderboard Platforms, Wellness and Wellbeing at Work Tools, and many, many more. While an argument can be made that each of these potentially improves employee engagement, there is a subtle (and dangerous) assumption when you blindly start your employee engagement journey with one of them – that you know what area of employee engagement you need to be solving for. Implementing a solution at random might correlate to a short-term uptick in employee engagement, but unfortunately, approaching employee engagement in this way has neither predictable nor long-term effects.

Are You Self-Diagnosing Employee Engagement Problems? Careful.

Simply choosing an employee engagement tool or initiative based on intuition is like starting a medical treatment because you think you know what is wrong. You read a few websites, talk to a few friends, and then self-diagnose. There are times when this may work (or at least not cause more damage), but the more potentially serious the ailment, the more dangerous this approach. Self-diagnosing employee engagement needs can be equally as dangerous. Nothing short of attracting and retaining the best employees and actively driving the results of your company is tied to having positively-engaged employees. Just as with our medical needs, we should never choose something to help us improve employee engagement when we are not exactly sure what aspect of employee engagement we are trying to cure.

The only way to know for sure where to place your efforts is to run an employee engagement survey first. Not only do questions need to be specifically crafted to uncover areas of strength and weakness, but rigorous statistical analysis of the results should be readily available to determine what areas to focus on (This is a conversation for another day, but quite often your main engagement driver is NOT the same as your lowest-scoring employee response). You need to make sure you place your efforts where you will receive the greatest and most lasting return on your investment.

Include Employees in Engagement Initiatives

It is vital from the beginning that you set up an atmosphere where employees feel they are an integral part of the engagement process. Your overarching message needs to be that you are listening and responding to your employees’ voices. Even if, all on your own, you stumble on a random employee engagement initiative that does some good, you will have lost the opportunity to get employee buy-in from the beginning. The best-received employee engagement initiatives are those where employees are recognized as having surfaced the challenge in the first place, and then management says, “We heard you and this is what we have done to fix it.”

Use a Little MAGIC

Ideally, you will want to have a methodology to work from that breaks employee engagement into its component parts. There are many solid models you can follow. Our DecisionWise model follows the acronym MAGIC – Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact, and Connection to describe the five main areas governing employee engagement. It is based on our analysis of over 25 million survey responses aggregated from our clients over the years. By using a methodology, you can more easily zero in on what is causing your people not to be as engaged as you would hope. You gain a crystal clear vision not only of your target, but how and where you must hit it.

For example, let’s say your survey suggests that a large group of your employees are not witnessing the Impact (one of the five key elements of MAGIC) of the work they do. Further, Impact is identified as the main driver of their engagement (or lack thereof). You could then put together an approach to help them see what type of impact they are having in their jobs.

A few years ago, we helped a medical device manufacturer identify a lack of impact being felt on their manufacturing line. Their employees were making life-saving devices, but they could not see their own impact on this process. The intervention? Help their people directly see the impact these devices were having on individual lives. They brought end-users of the devices, real people, in to speak to the company about how their lives had been changed because of what had been produced on the manufacturing line. The result? Line workers were no longer building a cold, hard, metal device. They were helping improve the quality of, and in some cases even saving real people’s lives. They put up posters of these same customers throughout the manufacturing plant. Impact for those working on the plant floor was no longer an issue. In fact, it became a strength.

The Prize Is Worth It

Finally, to gather the right data, you need a partner that can help you through the process. What questions will give you valid data you can confidently act on? How will you communicate the purposes of the survey throughout your organization to ensure optimal participation? How will you administer the survey so your employees can feel complete trust in the process and know that their responses will be kept confidential? How will you physically administer and collect the survey responses– especially for those in your organization who may not have access to computers? How will you aggregate the data and report on it so it can be acted on swiftly – preferably, as soon as the survey closes? And on it goes.

Tackling a project as big and important as improving employee engagement can be a daunting task. Don’t falter. The prize is worth it. Take it one step at a time. Learn from those who have gone before you; surveying first to understand the landscape is a great place to start.

]]>https://www.decision-wise.com/win-win-at-work-radio-show-interviews-decisionwise-president-greg-zippi/feed/0145599 Ways to Help Your CEO Champion Employee Engagement - DecisionWisehttps://www.decision-wise.com/9-ways-to-help-your-ceo-champion-employee-engagement/
https://www.decision-wise.com/9-ways-to-help-your-ceo-champion-employee-engagement/#commentsTue, 05 Sep 2017 12:34:34 +0000https://www.decision-wise.com/?p=14527I recently attended a conference devoted entirely to employee engagement. It was a well-planned event, with thoughtful presentations and meaningful insights. My colleagues were looking for ways to drive employee engagement, along with techniques to build an exceptional employee experience. My hat goes off to them; they are all striving to make work a better […]

]]>I recently attended a conference devoted entirely to employee engagement. It was a well-planned event, with thoughtful presentations and meaningful insights. My colleagues were looking for ways to drive employee engagement, along with techniques to build an exceptional employee experience. My hat goes off to them; they are all striving to make work a better place for everyone.

Yet, it became painfully clear that human resources (HR) leaders can only do so much. At the end of the day, the single most important factor in creating an engaged workforce is the organization’s CEO. There is no other way to say it, and I wish it weren’t always true. But the truth is that the most important element in employee engagement is a CEO who passionately leads the charge.

Let me give you some more color. During this conference, an HR leader would walk to the stage and deliver a world-class presentation about their organization’s remarkable employee experience. Then, everyone would start mumbling about how they would like to work for that company. Finally, some poor timid soul would raise their hand, hoping for a miracle, and ask the HR leader how they did it – what made them successful in creating that type of an employee experience? The audience would then lean forward as a hush settled and everyone strained to hear the Delphic oracle pronounce wisdom from on high. And… it was the same shy response each time. “Actually, I didn’t have to do much because our CEO led the charge.”

Then, a new presentation would take place; same scenario. I watched as shoulders slumped. Heads began to bow, and hearts were heavy. How is a hard-working HR manager in a manufacturing company that produces shipping containers supposed to compete with a company where the CEO wears flip flops and personally sends “thank you” notes to each employee?

Employee Engagement is Grown, Not Built.

Explain that employee engagement is not built; rather, it is grown and cultivated within the right employee experience (i.e., culture). Who is responsible for your organization’s culture? Your CEO. Help your CEO and other senior leaders realize that every important business outcome lies downstream from the experience and the engagement of the people who make the organization go. Because success starts with talented people, a CEO’s most important role is to give talented individuals a reason to join the organization’s cause, a reason to stay, and a reason to engage.

Get an Employee Engagement Professional

Suggest that your CEO hire an executive coach to guide him or her through the engagement/employee experience. Don’t use a regular coach; use someone that is skilled and experienced specifically with employee engagement, and is focused on helping the executive in this area.

Your Company’s CX is Equal to its EX

Remind your leadership team of what we call the “Law of Congruent Experience,” employees will deliver a customer experience (CX) that matches their own employee experience (EX) in the organization.

Find Allies to Help You

Do some internal campaigning to help you find supporters that will deliver the right messages to your management team. If you are four levels down, then find a champion at the highest level possible and ask them to carry the torch for you.

Know Your Audience

Don’t bring up engagement leadership in a group meeting. Find someone who can talk to the CEO one-on-one. This will reinforce the message that the real person responsible for engagement is the CEO; not a committee, not the HR department, and not some other nebulous group.

Survey Top Leaders About Employee Engagement

Send a brief survey to top leaders asking them about engagement and who they think is responsible for employee engagement within your organization. Use a survey to quiz your leaders on how well they understand employee engagement. These results will give you a sense of your gaps and where you can focus your teaching and learning efforts.

The CEO is the Messenger

Find Support

Finally, in the end, find whatever support you can.

Being in charge of employee engagement can be a tough job at times. All of us would rather be supporting a charismatic and dynamic CEO who leads the charge. Instead, some of you have to deal with the founder’s son or the proverbial brother-in-law, whose sole claims to the job are their family connections. But don’t give up! Keep fighting the good fight and keep fighting to improve employee engagement within your organization. It’s worth it.

What a relief to hear those words from an HR leader. Our line of work, in fact our entire purpose, is to help organizations improve. But that’s a lot like saying a doctor’s job is to make sick people healthy – a gross over-simplification. Much like a doctor deals with the gamut of ailments, from sniffles to salmonella, we see organizations ranging from needing a little tweak and nudge in the right direction to those needing emergency surgery. Unfortunately, the business reality is that we often want change and we want it yesterday, regardless of how bad the problem really is.

Case in point, a very optimistic client in Florida ran an employee engagement survey. They are a large enough institution that they have people of great quality, more than qualified to embark on an engagement initiative after having received their results. “Thanks, we’ve got this”, they said. And to some extent, they did. By working on three specific items, those scores went up…and every other score went down. There are many reasons why scores might go down but in their case, it came down to biting off just a little too much at once.

Creating change in an organization is a lot like spinning plates. If you spend too much time focusing on a couple of plates, the neglected ones are going to crash. This is a normal, human bias. We look at complex systems as a series of interchangeable component parts rather than, you know, a complex system. Our action planning defaults to “Put out that fire!” instead of being holistic and strategic about our path forward.

Employees Expect Action to Be Taken

The obvious remedy for trying to spin too many plates at once is to reduce the number of plates to a manageable amount. Unfortunately, no one buys a ticket to see someone spin one or two plates. A change initiative creates implied promises. One of our most oft-repeated refrains is that once you have started your change initiative, you have left neutral ground. Things will get better or worse, but they won’t stay the same. We have seen too many organizations do an engagement survey, shelve the results for a year, and act surprised when scores go down. Employees expect action to be taken, and each individual question on the survey communicates that an organization is willing to do something about it. If nothing is done (or perceived to have been done), employees lose trust in the process and in leadership. So now, even if nothing changed for the worse, employees are now looking more negatively at the same organizational behaviors.

The Sweet Spot

Thus far we have defined the problem as don’t try to do too much, but don’t do too little either! The solution to that is to play in the space between those two points. There is a sweet spot when you line up your organizational readiness and the scope of the change initiative that produces the best results. Miss the sweet spot, and you’ll likely fail.

Missing the Mark on Successful Change

As you can see, you could set yourself up for one of two kinds of failures when you miss the sweet spot.

The first type of failure is when you try to tackle too big of a change when you’re not ready. As demonstrated by our previous example from Florida, this is the classic overpromise-underdeliver scenario, the consequences of which are losing your employees’ trust in your capabilities and decreasing company motivation. We call this the crash-and-burn zone.

The other way to fail is by under-promising. This one is an automatic failure even if you are able to achieve your unambitious goals. Have you ever been in a classroom setting when the instructor asked a gimme question? What happened? We’ll bet that everyone sat there in silence hoping someone else would answer so they could all just move along, exemplifying the diffusion of responsibility that comes from feeling like your participation doesn’t matter. Aim low and whether you hit or miss doesn’t matter because you’ve already disappointed everyone and sandbagged your employees’ drive.

Finding the Sweet Spot for Success

Just as not all failures are the same, success comes in degrees as well. The “sweet spot” originated as a baseball term for the fat part of the bat that produces the best outcome when connecting with the ball. But someone who is untrained or unskilled in baseball will produce a substantially different outcome than someone who has prepared and built up the necessary capability to “knock it out of the park”.

Similarly, organizations should have realistic expectations on what change can feasibly come from an employee engagement initiative. If this is a new direction, or you lack the internal capabilities to improve, or if you don’t have clear and strong direction from senior leadership, your focus should be on creating foundational, behavioral change. Simply get people acting differently. This should create enough positive emotion from which to build a strong grassroots foundation that will lead you to the next level of change.

Cultural and Transformational Change

The next level of change is cultural and transformational. You’re not just changing people’s actions, but their very identity. This level of change cannot happen exclusively through grass-roots efforts. Eventually, you need buy-in from leadership in the organization. Culture is how an employee engages with the organization, its people, and its mission. It’s the ultimate expression of alignment and when done correctly, becomes the beating heart of an organization. As desirable as that sounds, it’s very difficult to achieve. And it’s impossible if you try it before your organization is ready.

Choosing the Right Amount of Change

Why does the same employee engagement survey, done for the 3rd time in a row, seem stale? Why is it no longer enough to run a survey and take a few high-level actions as a result? Because you’ve done enough to get the attention of the organization. You have increased your organizational maturity and it’s time to commensurately increase your ambition for change in order to stay in the sweet spot.

The key to tapping into the sweet spot is meta-organizational awareness – the ability to be brutally honest about your company’s readiness for change. If you want to avoid wasting your efforts, take a blunt assessment of where the organization stands before you attempt to increase engagement in your organization. Ask yourself, “What is our ceiling?” In other words, realistically determine your constraints or limitations. In our experience, the most common constraints are budget, lack of buy-in from key stakeholders, and lack of internal leadership capabilities. These constraints and others unique to your organization define the initial level of your ceiling.

Take, for example, a growing tech firm currently experiencing high turnover. They have a new HR leader who is singlehandedly trying to dam the river of attrition with twigs, pebbles, and strong language. Her entire organization is aligned around the idea of retaining employees, but unfortunately, there is not a lot of buy-in around using employee engagement as a retention tool. She shifted her focus from trying to make her organization a great place to work to making her organization a viable place to work. So employee engagement was placed on the back burner until her organization could successfully address the basic and foundational elements of employee satisfaction first. She was honest with herself and identified a realistic ceiling.

You can determine your own organization’s readiness by answering a few simple questions:

How much does top leadership believe in employee engagement?

Do leaders in your organization understand the behaviors and competencies that lead to engagement?

How much emphasis is placed on the outcomes of engagement, such as employee retention, productivity, customer service, innovation, etc.?

What resources do you have to implement change initiatives?

What else is your company trying to accomplish that could take priority over engagement?

Who owns engagement in your organization? I.e., is it a process owned by HR, or a value owned by leadership?

What organizational capabilities are required for the level of change you are undertaking? Do you have those capabilities in your organization?

The power of these questions is evident when we take the same action and implement it in three different scenarios. Let’s say three different companies are not doing enough to foster the employee voice, but they want to help employees feel their opinions and suggestions are important to the organization. All three companies decide to implement an electronic employee suggestion box to give employees a confidential way to submit suggestions for improvement.

Organization A. In the first organization, leadership generally makes a big deal out of their value of caring. Every voice matters. And employees have bought in. They find identity in working here and are very invested in the company’s success. In response to employees wanting to be more involved, the suggestion box is unveiled.

DIAGNOSIS:
Organizational Maturity: High.
Scope of Change: Low.

RESULT: The suggestion box feels like a slap in the face. Employees believe the organization is capable of so much more than a mere suggestion box. They are looking for real connection points to leadership. They want interaction.

Organization B. In the second organization, leadership knows how to talk the talk. Walking the walk is not as positive, and employees don’t feel like leadership actually means it when they say they want to hear suggestions. As such, implementing a suggestion box is a decent improvement that employees embrace. People submit suggestions but leaders in the organization don’t respond to them.

DIAGNOSIS:
Organizational Maturity: Low.
Scope of Change: Medium.

RESULT: Crash and burn. Employees stop offering suggestions, because—as usual—nobody is listening. The experience only goes to reinforce and strengthen the opinion that the organization does not care about what employees have to say. Morale continues to drop and the next initiative will be even harder to accomplish.

Organization C. In the third organization, employees feel safe in feeding suggestions to leadership, but they lack an effective mechanism. They are willing to try the suggestion box, but more importantly, leadership is aligned enough to take the suggestion box seriously. It is presented as merely the first step in a larger change initiative.

If this sounds like a version of organizational Goldilocks, that’s because it is. Some change is too hot; some change is too cold. Like Goldilocks, your organization needs the change that is just right.

It’s not about trying to do the universal “right things.” It’s about doing the right thing for your specific organization based on your level of organizational maturity. If the capabilities of your organization dictate that you can only take on a few modest actions, take them on, realizing you are building a foundation for the future. Once the foundation is built and your organization is ready to take on more, you can start to take on the transformational activities that really change your culture and create an employee experience that drives engagement.

]]>How To Decide on the Best Plan of Action Based on Your Employee Survey Results

Action planning is always a good idea. But that doesn’t mean that every action plan is a good one. An organization can create all the awareness in the world, but much like my bathroom scale reminds me every morning, awareness can only accomplish so much. To develop a clear path toward effective behavioral change, an action plan must be grounded in a correct understanding of what’s really going on behind the scenes.

A few years back, a well-known national brand came to us. They had several well-publicized difficulties and wanted to do an employee engagement survey to get a feel for how those difficulties were affecting employees. As expected, their results came in below average. But what no one saw coming was a record-setting low in how negatively people responded to one of their survey items about opportunities for training and development. It was quite literally the lowest score we had ever seen for any survey item on any engagement survey. Something needed to change, and fast.

The way forward for this organization seemed as clear as a yellow-brick road. Consulting is easy when the answers are spelled out so brightly. Running the stats was a mere formality at this point. Until it wasn’t. According to our driver analysis, this gaping wound of a question was NOT a driver of engagement. Upon closer examination, the main driver was actually something hiding in the 40th percentile of questions, i.e. an item that was in the low range, but not so low that anyone gave it much thought. With that knowledge, we had to convince the clients to pay no attention to the giant, floating, record-setting, green head, but rather to the unassuming old man behind the curtain. And to their credit, they listened.

Every engagement campaign has two major decisions. First, should we even do the survey (this one’s easy – 90% of the time the correct decision is yes). The second is the “now what?” We have results; but what do they really mean, and what do we do with them? Think of how an optometrist flips through a series of lenses until what you’re looking at stops being hazy and comes into clear focus. A clear action plan is easily discovered by filtering the data through the three lenses of action planning.

Lens 1 – Statistical analysis

The first and most important step in developing an employee engagement survey action plan is determining which levers to pull to create the greatest impact on employee engagement. This can be accomplished in several ways, each with increasing degrees of efficacy – good, better, and best.

Good: Statistical significance. This is the most basic statistical test you can run and really the bare minimum you should be doing with your results. It simply checks the average of your data against another average (e.g. your previous data or an industry benchmark) and checks to see if the difference is likely real or simply due to chance. But the problem is that is all it tells you. It doesn’t indicate if that’s the best place to prioritize your efforts.

Better: Correlation is definitely an improvement upon significance testing. Which items go up as engagement goes up? When do they go down in unison? The value here is obvious. But you run the risk of spurious correlation (among other things). A helpful example I use when teaching statistics is that the more churches there are in a town, the more drunk driving incidents occur. But it turns out the relationship is spurious because it can be explained by a third variable: the population of a town. Thus, the real finding is that the more people you have in an area, the more likely it is to see a rise in both churches and DUIs. So, while the correlation lens is helpful and certainly provides direction, it also carries the potential for misdirection.

Best: Your best employee engagement strategy is conducting a driver analysis (multiple regression). This is like a correlation on steroids. It combs through and strips away all the spurious correlations, leaving you with a handful of items that best predict engagement. Using this lens provides the clearest, most reliable path forward. But these employee engagement statistics are only the first step.

Lens 2 – Lowest scores

So why, if you’ve already discovered the best predictors of engagement, do you need to go any further? You don’t…if your only goal is addressing employee engagement directly. But try putting yourself in the mindset of an employee as you deliver the following news: “We see that you scored top-down communication as something we are terrible at. But we decided to ignore that in favor of something our statistician says is more significant.” Would this make you feel listened to? Valued? Or conversely, would it make you feel like the survey was a complete waste of your time? Maybe you would even see it as a violation of your expectation to be heard. The high and low scores are the strongest messages your employees send to you. If you don’t acknowledge them, you are adding an unnecessary degree of difficulty to rolling out your engagement strategy or campaign, and worse, you may not even get the chance to roll it out because you will have lost any good faith before you begin.

As I’ve already mentioned, your first step is using the lens of statistical data to identify your action plan. Your second step must be getting employees to trust in that plan. Making an effort to address low scores is an effective way to foster trust. When you announce changes and initiatives that are coming from the survey results, use the second lens of low scores to focus your communication efforts.

Lens 3 – Your intuition

As uncomfortable as it may make you feel, a paper checklist is far better at diagnosing illness than your doctor is. The humble checklist has outperformed doctors since we started studying this back in the early 70’s. But doctors provide a great value when the checklist reaches a conclusion and the doctor uses intuition as a comprehensive control check. Similarly, any conclusion reached by looking through the first two lenses needs one last check for common sense. Maybe there is a problem with senior leadership but a retirement is imminent. Or maybe office space is inadequate but plans are already in place for a new building. And, returning to our original case study, maybe that glaring, rock-bottom score is upstaging the actual driving factor.

It was this third and final lens of intuition that gave our client the confidence to focus heavily on drivers. Using the second lens of lowest scores, they acknowledged how bad that one survey item was and explained how market forces were preventing them from addressing it that year but that they’d invest heavily in other areas designed to improve engagement (for them, improved communication and a better connection to the organizational culture). Their validation of the employees’ voice earned them the trust they needed to implement their engagement campaign.

At survey time the next year, employee engagement had increased dramatically (our most improved client of the year). And it wasn’t just engagement that improved. Typically, I tell clients if an item goes up 7% they should throw a party. That abnormally low survey item, the one we convinced them to barely work on? It went up almost 250%! Engagement is the rising tide that lifts all boats, i.e., when you love your job, you can overlook its imperfections more easily. And using these three lenses of action planning is the most effective way to create the most effective employee engagement action plan.

]]>https://www.decision-wise.com/the-3-lenses-of-employee-engagement-survey-action-planning/feed/114464Why Do Your Employees Choose to Work for You? - DecisionWisehttps://www.decision-wise.com/why-do-your-employees-choose-to-work-for-you/
https://www.decision-wise.com/why-do-your-employees-choose-to-work-for-you/#respondTue, 15 Aug 2017 17:41:07 +0000https://www.decision-wise.com/?p=14456(Article originally published on August 10, 2017 by TLNT ) Just as the customer has expectations around a firm’s brand, so does an employee. While the Customer Value Proposition defines the value of a firm’s products or services to the consumer, the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the value — tangible, intangible, and reputational — that […]

Just as the customer has expectations around a firm’s brand, so does an employee. While the Customer Value Proposition defines the value of a firm’s products or services to the consumer, the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the value — tangible, intangible, and reputational — that an employee receives from an organization in exchange for his or her work.

When we work with organizations on their employee engagement initiatives, we often conduct what we refer to as “engagement summits.” During these summits, we review the results of the company’s employee engagement surveys, discuss recommendations for improvement, and develop action plans. One of the key components of these summits is to discuss the organization’s EVP.

We start by asking organizational leaders, “Why would someone choose to work for you?” All but the most in-touch organizations come back with responses like, “We pay above market,” “We were just voted an employer of choice,” “We have a recognizable name,” or simply, “Because we have a lot of open positions.” Others simply look at each other, laugh uncomfortably, and say “Uhhh…we don’t really know.” Either way, few are able to describe their EVP in any level of detail.

Two companies that know their EVP

We recently worked with two restaurant companies, one a 400-location fast food chain and the other a 150-location upscale chain. The fast food employees, as we learned through surveys and focus groups, found the greatest value in flexible schedules (which allowed them to meet family, school, and social obligations), the ability to associate with friends while on the job, and getting 50% off of once-per-week lunches (a perk that cost about 78 cents per week per employee).

The upscale restaurant workers, in contrast, were engaged by completely different factors: opportunities for growth, development, and advancement; the trust of their managers; community support; and satisfied customers.

The leaders at the fast food chain, understanding their EVP, also understood that most of their workers were young and mobile-device savvy. In order to facilitate scheduling (one of the key drivers of their value proposition), they went to an app-based scheduling system their employees could access from home. They implemented a recruiting referral program that paid employees $100 per referral hired, solving the recruiting problem by bringing networks of friends and family together in the same locations. They expanded their discounted food program to include one meal per four-hour shift. Employee engagement and retention increased significantly.

The upscale food chain also looked at its EVP and discovered that the value proposition varied across job descriptions. For example, a large percentage of the chain’s servers (who made up a significant portion of the population) fit into one of two categories: students and single parents. For them, a flexible schedule with sufficient working hours to pay the bills was extremely important. The restaurants accommodated. Restaurant managers and assistant managers, however, valued the opportunity for career development, training, and advancement. For the latter group, they put in place a comprehensive manager training program, which greatly reduced attrition.

Here’s how to know your EVP

Most organizations don’t take the time to review their EVP in detail. Understanding your EVP starts with asking the following questions, but doesn’t end there. We find that many organizations think they know the answers to these questions. However, we also find that many times employees respond differently. This misalignment results in ineffective hiring, disengagement, and attrition.

Do you know your EVP? Start by answering the following four questions (and their corresponding outcome questions). Then, compare your answers with those of your employees to see if you are aligned:

What is our organization’s “brand” (what you are known for by current and potential employees)? What outcomes do you experience because of that brand, and are those the outcomes you want?
Why would someone choose to join your organization (what is the value you propose to future employees)? What would it take to attract that person?
Why would an employee choose to stay at your organization? What would it take to keep that person?
Are there any gaps between what appeals to your employees and what they experience? What would it take to close those gaps?
EVP doesn’t just apply to the organization as a whole. Each company, function, department, plant, and even manager has its own brand. Do you know your EVP?

]]>https://www.decision-wise.com/why-do-your-employees-choose-to-work-for-you/feed/0144565 Growth Conversations to Engage and Retain Your Employees - DecisionWisehttps://www.decision-wise.com/5-growth-conversations-to-engage-and-retain-your-employees/
https://www.decision-wise.com/5-growth-conversations-to-engage-and-retain-your-employees/#respondTue, 08 Aug 2017 12:36:36 +0000https://www.decision-wise.com/?p=14423One of the biggest reasons people leave jobs is to seek opportunities for growth. According to Glassdoor, job seekers ask about growth opportunities more than any other benefit. They also found that career growth was the top reason people leave their jobs. An employee’s perception of his or her own personal and professional growth is […]

]]>One of the biggest reasons people leave jobs is to seek opportunities for growth.

According to Glassdoor, job seekers ask about growth opportunities more than any other benefit. They also found that career growth was the top reason people leave their jobs. An employee’s perception of his or her own personal and professional growth is also one of the top predictors of engagement. When employees stagnate in their progress, they tend to be less engaged, and they look for other opportunities. Average tenure at most organizations gets smaller all the time. Your employees often believe their best opportunities reside outside the organization. Employees need skills and experiences to qualify for those opportunities.

Many managers and organizations might look at this problem and throw their hands up. They do not want to add levels of management to their organizations to provide more growth opportunities. In fact, many organizations are trying to flatten rather than deepen their management structures.

Managers can help with this problem by opening a dialogue with their employees about growth. Many managers either consciously or subconsciously avoid conversations about career progression when they don’t have a promotion to dangle in front of their employees. They lack a narrative for growth outside traditional promotion opportunities. Below are five growth conversations that every manager should have to engage their employees.

Conversation #1: Career Ambitions

Managers should have a pretty clear understanding of the direction each of their employees want to take their careers. All other growth conversations stem from this one. This should be one of the first conversations a manager has with his or her employees. Managers should first gauge how important career development is to their employees. Trying to push an employee into growth who does not want growth can be counterproductive.

The initial role of a manager in this conversation is to listen for understanding. Managers should be able to understand and clearly articulate the career ambitions of each of their employees. Managers should return to this conversation regularly to demonstrate their deep knowledge of their employees’ ambitions and to check for changes in their plans. The very act of listening and understanding will cause employees to feel that their managers care about their careers. This alone—without further action—can cause people to feel better about their career prospects.

A manager can also serve as a mentor in these conversations. If an employee does not have a clear picture of his future, a manager can help him in painting that picture. Managers can draw on their own experiences and the experiences of others to help employees define their futures. When employees have a vision of what they can become, it becomes easier for them to deal with less exciting parts of their jobs.

Conversation #2: Strategic Goal Setting

Through the career-ambition conversation managers understand the long-term goals of their employees. Managers should also help create a short-term plan to build toward long-term ambitions; this is done in the strategic-goal-setting conversation.

Most managers have an annual goal-setting session with their employees. These sessions are typically associated with an annual review process, and they typically revolve around tactical goals that address performance in an employee’s current position. The strategic-goal-setting conversation should be decoupled from the tactical-goal conversation. Employees should know the conversation is being had to specifically address their career ambitions. During the conversation, the manager should gain understanding about the competencies, skills, and experiences the employee needs to ultimately achieve his or her long-term ambitions. The conversation is future oriented, but it focuses on what we can do now. Together the employee and the manager figure out what skills can be learned over the short term that are both applicable to the employee’s future direction, and applicable to what the organization is trying to accomplish.

Sometimes an employees’ skills and competencies do not align with direction of the company. In this case, the company needs to decide if they are willing to invest in growth for the sake of growth. The best short-term goals build skills and competencies that are both strategic for the employee and for the organization.

Conversation #3: Opportunity Alignment

Depending on the employee, some job tasks that need to be completed may be viewed as an opportunity or as an obligation. Some of that perception will be guided by an employee’s vision for his or her future. Of course, we recognize some tasks assigned by a manager may be viewed as attractive by every member of his or her team. Some tasks are universally undesirable. Somewhere in between the extremes of that spectrum are tasks that are attractive to some but not others.

The alignment conversation is a regular check-in to understand what tasks have emerged that the employee finds attractive. Managers who know the goals of their employees are better able to present tasks or responsibilities to their employees who will view them as attractive. Aligning tasks to those who view them as attractive may mean sacrificing efficiency in the short term. Managers will often find it easier to assign tasks to their subject matter experts. The increased engagement your team experiences from variety and new challenges will counterbalance any loss in efficiency.

Conversation #4: Framing

Even if you have perfectly aligned your team to the tasks each member finds to be attractive growth opportunities, you will likely find you have a tremendous number of remaining tasks that nobody finds attractive.

The term “framing” is used in psychology to describe a bias that occurs when people make different choices depending on how the choice is presented to them. Even when faced with identical facts, people make different choices when those facts are presented with a positive frame versus when those facts are presented with a negative frame.

Employees taking on challenges need positive framing. Without framing, some of the benefit of the challenge is lost. People still grow, they just don’t view the growth as positive. I am not advocating manipulation of employees. As a manager, it is important to see the real benefits of the challenging assignments employees are taking on. Managers should understand and articulate for employees not only how the challenge benefits them in their current positions, but also how it will benefit them in their future endeavors.

Conversation #5: Temperature Check

Providing growth opportunities to employees is about creating engagement. Growth opportunities get employees out of the day-to-day boredom of their jobs. If a task is not providing the challenge it is intended to provide, think about adding additional challenge to the task. Push them to achieve better results; remove some of the support structure; add complexity with corresponding tasks or responsibilities; add a leadership component. Do something to the task or responsibility to raise the level of challenge.

On the flip side, some employees dealing with a new task or responsibility may begin to feel overwhelmed. In this situation, a key benefit of growth is lost. Overwhelmed employees find it difficult to engage over the long term. Throwing a person who cannot swim into the deep end of the pool without a life preserver is more likely to drown them than to teach them to swim. Likewise, an employee who is given a task that he has very limited ability to accomplish on his own will lead that employee to burn out rather than engage. In these situations, a manager should apply additional training, guidance, support, and resources to help the employee.

There is a space between boredom and burnout where engagement occurs. The temperature check is a conversation to be held frequently to understand where the employee is between boredom and burnout and to adjust accordingly.

Frequency

The frequency with which these conversations need to occur depends on the employee. Some employees have extremely dynamic ambitions—they change their minds all the time. With these employees, you may need to have regular conversations about career ambitions. For most employees, you can get away with having the ambition conversation only once a year. The alignment, framing, and temperature-check conversations should all be happening as challenges arise and as employees complete growth opportunities.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Many organizations may see this as a catch 22. If they don’t invest time and resources into growing their employees, their employees leave to find growth opportunities elsewhere. If they do invest time and resources into growing their employees, their employees use their new skills and abilities to find new jobs.

Let’s look at both scenarios. In the first scenario, an employee feels like he or she is no longer growing. The employee becomes bored with the day-to-day tasks he or she fulfills. The employee disengages. The employee leaves the organization for a new opportunity. The employee’s exit is probably viewed as a positive thing, because that employee was disengaged anyway.

In the second scenario, the employee feels like he or she is no longer growing. The manager finds out about the employee’s career ambitions. The manager assigns existing tasks in the organization to the employee based on interests and growth plans. The manager offers ongoing support to the employee to ensure he has the resources and training he needs to complete the new or novel task. The employee remains engaged. The employee, equipped with new skills, may look for a new job outside the organization. The employee may also see the merit in being part of an organization where he has the opportunity to gain new experience and build skills. The employee may stay; but even if your attitude is that employees are going to leave the organization either way, you may as well engage them while they’re here by helping them grow!